


Conversations on the Front Stoop

by DragonThistle



Series: Days You Think You'll Forget (but I kept a scrapbook full of polaroids) [7]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Implied Exploding Head Syndrome, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Insomnia, Late Night Conversations, Smoking, pre-Memory Erasing Gun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27508036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonThistle/pseuds/DragonThistle
Summary: "Kinda fucked, isn't it?""Hm?""It's kinda fucked up how our brains keep us runnin'. But sometimes they, I dunno, break. Don't work right. Enough they could kill us. Do kill some, I guess. What the hell's up with that?"
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship, No Romantic Relationship(s), platonic - Relationship
Series: Days You Think You'll Forget (but I kept a scrapbook full of polaroids) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959427
Kudos: 11





	Conversations on the Front Stoop

It’s pushing two in the morning when Matt gives up on the idea of sleep.

He’s been tossing and turning, flopping around on his sides, his stomach, his back, flipping his pillow from one side to the other, done everything he could to make himself comfortable. Nothing’s working. As tired as he is, sleep just won’t come.

So it’s with a tired resignation that he rolls out of bed, pulls on some pajama pants and a faded t-shirt, and shuffles out of his bedroom. He’s aiming for the sitting room, thinking maybe he can manage to doze off on the couch to the sound of late ads for non-stick frying pans and matching steak knives. The soft drone of payment plans and “call now and get two more for free” is his last resort. It’s not the first time sleep has danced just out of his reach, laughing as it skips away from his numb fingertips.

But as he’s about to settle himself on the couch, he notices the front light is on. 

The little yellow lamp above their door is only on if someone’s out working late or it’s Halloween. So that it’s on despite the late (early?) hour stirs something amongst the settled cobwebs of Matt’s tired mind. He frowns at it, squinting through the dark, tripping over his tired feet as he approaches the front door. The handle is cold under his palm, the door unlocked, and Matt eases it open slowly as if expecting something horrendous to leap out at him.

Tord is sitting on the front stoop, hunched over a cigarette.

He turns slightly, glancing up at Matt with heavy bags under his eyes. He looks small in an oversized, raggedy black jacket, the cuffs barely hanging on by curled threads and the elbows so threadbare they’ve torn through completely. When Matt steps outside and closes the door behind him, Tord goes to put the cigarette out on the walk.

“Keep it.” Matt says quietly, his voice rusty at the edges with attempted sleep. He sinks down onto the step next to Tord with a sigh, longer legs spilling over onto the walk as he stretches out, his arms dangling over his lap. He tilts his head up to look at the sky, manages to pick out a few stars and the sliver of a moon peering out from the clouds,

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

Tord is in the middle of taking a drag. When he answers, the words tumble out with a cloud of smoke, “Head won’t shut up. Nothin’ new. What’re you doin’ up?”

“Was never asleep,” Matt says before he can think up an excuse. It wouldn’t matter if he lied anyway. Matt knows he probably looks like shit; bed mussed hair, bruise tired eyes, a crooked bend of exhaustion to his frame. Hell, he hadn’t even put on shoes before he’d come outside. At least summer is still sitting thick in the air, tempered by the cooling night but still warm enough to be almost comfortable.

“What kept you?” Tord asks his cigarette because he’s not looking at Matt. But the question is genuine in its own way.

Matt shrugs, runs a hand through his tangled ginger hair and feels it snag on greasy knots, “Mm, dunno. Just can’t fall asleep. Not the first time this has happened.”

“Insomnia?”

“Hell if I know.”

There’s a pause where Tord looks like he might say something. But instead he takes another pull on his cigarette, making the cherry flare against the dark. He offers the stick to Matt and there’s a moment of hesitation before Matt declines. He’d done some hits in high school, chasing highs to combat his low grades, but the fun had worn out quickly and cigarettes wouldn’t bring the same mind numbing buzz. Sometimes he misses the lethargy of it though. The lull, the way the world slipped and slid around him, the way he’d just floated through like nothing even mattered. He thinks maybe that’s what Tom chases with his drinking, considered following him down the road a couple of times. But alcohol has never been Matt’s thing and he’s too much of a lightweight to try. 

Crickets and distant night sounds fill the silence between them. A car drives down the street, alone in the dead of night, its lights are accusatory eyes in the dark that take in, judge, and are gone before anything can be done. Matt watches some adventurous fireflies mill about on the front lawn. Tord stubs out the short butt of his light and pulls a pack out of his jacket pocket. The tank top he’s wearing underneath has old grease stains that never came out in the wash. Tord taps another cigarette and hooks it between his lips but doesn’t light it. 

“Kinda fucked, isn’t it?”

“Hm?” Matt glances up tiredly, chin in one hand and elbow on his knee. The other is idly turning over pebbles on the cement walk between his legs.

“It’s kinda fucked up,” Tord repeats, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep and lidded with exhaustion as he stares without seeing at the fence, “How our brains keep us runnin’. But sometimes they, I dunno, break. Don’t work right. Enough they could kill us. Do kill some, I guess. What the hell’s up with that?”

Matt turns it over for a moment, chews the thought with the slow process of a computer left on too long, “Maybe it’s, uh…mm…nature…thing. Ya’ know. Fuck. Survival of the fittest or whatever.”

“Maybe.” Tord doesn’t sound convinced but he does’t press the issue either. 

The unlit cigarette is still in his mouth.

Small minutes pass.

A light comes in the house across the street, spills pale yellow through the thin front curtains. Shadows move across it for a moment or two. Then the light goes out again and they’re both left with multi-colored smears in a vaguely rectangular shapes across their eyes. 

“You think anyone’d notice if I disappeared?” Tord says quietly.

“What?” Says Matt.

Tord takes the cigarette out of his mouth, looks like he’s thinking about throwing it as far into the night as he can, eventually tucks it back into the pack stand up on wobbly legs. His pajama pants bunch over his bare feet; he’d forgotten shoes as well. 

“I’m goin’ t’ bed.” Tord mutters. He looks down at Matt, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. One of them has a hole in it that his knuckles punched through, “You comin’ or stayin’?”

Matt takes a deep breath, thinks for a second, and then stands up with a labored sigh, “Can’t hurt to try, I guess.”

They shuffle as quietly as two exhausted people can back into the house, flipping off the front light and locking the door behind them. The house is dark, pale light from distant street lamps at the corners barely reaching them, making shadows soft and deep. The only sounds are the hum of the air conditioning and Edd’s snoring; he’s left his door cracked open for Ringo to come and go as she pleases. 

Tord yawns, jaw stretching, heel of his hand digging into his eye. Then he pats Matt lightly on the back a couple of times, takes a step, and is swallowed by the shadows. He reappears momentarily in a patch of light and then vanishes again. His footfalls are ghost whispers on the carpet. There’s the barest creak of a hinge opening, the click of a door, and Matt is alone. 

He grabs a drink of water from the kitchen, considers going back to his room, to his bed, to the pillow that has brought him no comfort and the blankets that feel to claustrophobic. Instead, he flops onto the couch, turns the television on to a low hum of noise and flickering light, and lays down to watch the ads roll through. He catches a whiff of cigarette smoke on his clothes, wrinkles his nose at it. The thought crosses his mind that he could go change, probably should, really. But by the time he’s pursued the thought to the point where he might take action, he’s already feeling drained and heavy and can’t bother to muster up the energy.

Sleep plays silly buggers for another couple of hours until Tom stumbles out of his room to take his usual crack-of-dawn-hangover-piss.

Matt turns off the television and slinks back into his bedroom before anyone notices him.

This time, the bed looks comfortable and inviting. This time, his stupid brain mercifully grants him the opportunity to sleep. It’s only a couple of hours worth, but it’s enough to make it through another day.

And maybe a small zombie apocalypse.


End file.
